Examples

If you are a heel wearer, then the problem, pre-boots, is simply answered — one of the two shoes of the season: Louis Vuitton's square-toed "Beautys" or Prada's pointy-toed crocodile pumps with a leather bow.

There were a few notable differences from his old punk-rock companions: They favored square-toed motorcycle boots over the lace-up combat variety; they had terrible hair and listened to even worse music.

The shy, silent child with downcast eyes who left town hobbling on bandaged feet returns a year later as a cheerful and talkative teenager, still wearing a Chinese outfit of delicate brocaded satin but complacently displaying beneath it her fashionably unbound feet in a pair of sturdy square-toed black leather lace-ups “they looked like shoes for a very rough little American boy, and they had steel taps on the heels”.